Why Blackwater Dropped Tear Gas

Share

Why Blackwater Dropped Tear Gas

Does Blackwater actually have a decent semi-explanation for chucking tear gas grenades on Iraqis? In my post last week, I was skeptical in the extreme about the contractors'' excuse: that they mistook the tear gas grenades for smoke grenades – the two look a whole lot different. But a gentleman e-mailed me to suggest that the security guards really had been confused; the grenades had been covered in duct-tape to reduce the noise of jingling ordnance (a common infantry practice). So the traditional markings were obscured. This is not to defend the mistake, but to explain it.

"Okay," I said, "I understand that the individuals in question meant to throw a smoke grenade. Why exactly would they throw a smoke grenade into a traffic intersection? Were they trying to signal air assets?" He replied:

smoke is used to "mark" as well as "clear" intersections - the Iraqi's have been conditioned so that when they see smoke they stop and back off - henceforth why it was tossed ... to hold the traffic while the motorcade came through

Ahhhh. At least that's a reasonable answer. I didn't understand the smoke grenade, but it seems that there's an insider's advantage to its use. For the record, I don't see anything wrong with Blackwater carrying tear gas grenades, since they are security forces similar to the military police, and they aren't acting as U.S. military forces. It would have been a bad mistake to purposefully use tear gas grenades in an offensive fashion, but I'll allow that it wasn't necessarily a deliberate intent to do so.